John Bull (solus). "A few more Pirates afloat, and I'll get all the carrying trade back into my hands."

Shortly
after the American Civil War began in April 1861, Great Britain formally
announced its neutrality, and other European nations followed its lead.In this cartoon, artist William Newman criticizes the British
policy of neutrality, charging that the construction of Confederate
vessels, most notably the Alabama, by private British
shipbuilders renders the British government’s policy a hypocritical
farce.John Bull, the
symbol of Great Britain, encourages the Alabama’s commander,
Raphael Semmes, to fire away, while telling the Union (“Yankee”) to
shove off.John Bull’s
eye is full of the money (British pounds £) he will make, and the
overseas trade he will control, resulting from the actions of the
Confederate “pirates.”

During
the war, the Confederacy hoped to entice European governments,
particularly the British and French, to recognize its independence,
ignore the Union’s blockade of Confederate ports, and, ideally, offer
military assistance.Such
possibilities were a real threat and greatly concerned the Lincoln
administration and its Union supporters.Great Britain had stronger economic ties with the American South
than with the North, mainly through the cotton trade, and many of the
British upper class identified with the South’s more hierarchical
society.(However, British
factory workers, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation, expressed their sympathy for the Union through mass
meetings and petitions.)

In the
summer of 1862, the exhaustion of Britain’s surplus of cotton and
recent military successes by the Confederacy put pressure on the
administration of Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister, to
intervene diplomatically, if not militarily.In fact, Britain and France contemplated a plan (never carried
out) to mediate between the Union and Confederacy, which would have
meant de facto recognition of Confederate independence.What most enraged the Union, though, was the construction and
refitting of Confederate ships in Liverpool, England.

The
British shipyards built several Confederate blockade-runners, which
poked holes in the Union blockade (although the Union Navy deterred most
attempts).That was bad enough in Union eyes, but in March 1862, the
Confederacy went further by commissioning a warship (commerce raider) to
be built in Liverpool.British
law prohibited the construction and arming of a belligerent’s warships
in British shipyards.However,
the spirit of the law was circumvented by building the ship in Liverpool
under forged papers showing its ownership by the Italian kingdom of
Palermo, and then fitting it with arms, transported by a British ship,
in the British Bahamas.It
joined the Confederate fleet as the Florida, destroying 38
American merchant ships until it was captured in October 1864 off the
coast of Brazil.

The
vigorous protests of Charles Francis Adams, the U.S.
minister to Great Britain, nearly succeeded in halting the launch of a
second Confederate cruiser, but it left port in the summer of 1862 on an
alleged trial run, never to return.It docked in the Azores, where it was fitted with arms, and then
sailed as the CSS Alabama, under the command of Raphael Semmes.Semmes had already demonstrated his talent as captain of the CSS
Sumter, a blockade-runner that captured 18 prizes until he was
forced to abandon it.Under
his command, the swift and mighty Alabama
proved to be a highly effective vessel, seizing or destroying 69 Union
ships over its career before being defeated by the USS Kearsarge
in June 1864 off the coast of France.

Buoyed by their success in
launching the Florida and Alabama in the summer of 1862,
the Confederacy contracted with a British shipbuilding firm, Laird, for
the construction of two armor-plated ships (called Laird rams), armed
with guns and a seven-foot iron spike intended to pierce wooden vessels
below the waterline.Adams
intensified his protests to the British government, culminating in a
terse warning to the British foreign minister, Lord Russell:“It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship
that this is war.”The
Palmerston government had already decided to detain the ships, but
Adams’s resolute stance made him a hero in the Union.

Although the Britain government
had reversed its formerly lenient policy, the issue of British
construction and refitting of Confederate warships during the Civil War
continued to be a major impediment to improving U.S.-British relations
in the post-war period.This
controversy, collectively called “the Alabama Claims,” was
finally resolved in 1872 by an international board of arbitration, with Britain agreeing to pay the United States $15.5
million in damages.

Following
the capture of the Alabama, Semmes toured Europe, and then
returned as a hero to the Confederacy.Promoted to rear admiral, he took command of the James River
squadron that protected the Confederate capitol of Richmond.Forced to flee when Richmond fell, he finally surrendered to
Union forces at Greensboro, North Carolina.President Johnson granted Semmes a pardon in May 1865, and he
returned to his home state of Alabama.